Explosion Event of Cavitation in Intact Xylem Conduit

Cavitation in plant conduits only involves two processes of air bubbles: the gradual expansion and elongation, and the explosion event. An explosion event of cavitation, which can only occur in intact conduit at water tension, trigs acoustic (or ultrasound) emission and induces air to diffuse with high speed, simultaneously. Synchrotron X-ray phase contrast microscopy (XPCM) was used to capture cavitation event in intact conduits of leaves of corn and rice. Cavitation events occur in certain areas of leaves and have a certain time frame. Before XPCM experiment, several preliminary experiments were done as follows: 1) Paraffin sections of leaves of different species were observed to select samples and to determine the occurrence area of cavitation event of leaves. 2) The time frame of cavitation occurrence was determined by ultrasonic emission. 3) The water potentials of leaves were determined, to know the water state of the leaves during cavitation. Locked the area and time frame of cavitation event in the leaves, consecutive XPCM images of cavitation process were more easily acquired. The images show that the phenomenon of gas bubble fully filling conduits for an instant took place in intact conduits of detached leaves of corn and rice more easily. It is that the gas diffusing in a moment was caused by the explosion of the air seeds which had entered in the intact conduits of the leaves. For living plants, it is suggested that the explosion event of cavitation is the most important for embolism formation.